Luke Banks, General Manager, Arabian Packaging, can’t speak highly enough of EFI’s new one-stop solution for the corrugated industry. He tells us why
Arabian Packaging, a corrugated packaging manufacturer based in the Jebel Ali Industrial Area of Dubai, delivers an in-house end-to-end service, from fielding international enquiries and ascertaining and understanding customer requirements, through the design and innovation stage, right through to the manufactur- ing of its own tooling and plates, flexo post-print and logistics.
The company has just unveiled the EFI Corrugated Business System, a scalable, fully integrated browser-based system designed specifically for the corrugated manufactur- ing and display industries.
Available as part of the Cor- rugated Packaging Suite or as a standalone solution, it provides businesses with the tools to con- nect and integrate all aspects of operations across manufacturing, business and production processes. The intuitive modular system offers increased visibility, improved communication and advanced automation driven by the reduction in manual touch points. The industry-leading solution offers intelligent cost estimating, enhanced ordering capability, integrated financial solutions and comprehensive supply chain management tools.
Arabian Packaging is one of the longest established corrugated packaging manufacturers in the UAE, operating since 1982. Moving to a purpose-built facility in Dubai in 2004, the business has continued to expand, serving as majority suppliers to a wide range of multinational corporations.
“I believe we’re the only company in the GCC that has both seven- and eight-colour printing machines, so we’re able to develop a high level of high- definition graphics and shelf-ready packaging for our customer base,” says Luke Banks, General Manager, Arabian Packaging.
The business continues to grow in line with a strategic investment plan initiated in 2015, and now produces corrugated packaging across a wide portfolio within the UAE, across the GCC and extending to East Africa, India and Pakistan.
This strategy has seen the business make a significant investment in industry-leading hardware as well as in advanced automation. Mr Banks describes the implementation of the EFI Corrugated Business System as the final piece of the investment plan.
“The Corrugated Packag- ing Suite builds efficiencies and maximises the potential of those other investments, and is also a great mitigator of risk, as it removes a lot of manual intervention,” he says.
Mr Banks says the company’s key challenge on the software side was fragmentation, a common grievance for businesses that have expanded at pace and added additional solutions as required.
“The EFI Corrugated Packag- ing Suite is a one-stop solution to take control of our enquiry
to order process, right the way through to dispatch and delivery to the customer in one simple business suite,” he says.
The Corrugated Packaging Suite complements a key tenet of Arabian Packaging: data, insights, and action – some- thing it builds into the company culture across departments.
Mr Banks explains: “The system provides us with the right data so that we can review busi- ness performance, efficiency and how we plan orders through- out the site. It gives us the right data to generate the right insights and understanding.
“From that understanding, we can then generate the actions needed to build the business forward and drive the strategy year on year.”
These insights have allowed Arabian Packaging to build a strong foundation across a single business system, with opportunities to introduce additional capabilities as the system and the business develop further.
While the system has had a fundamental impact on opti- mising a fragmented workflow, there are some tangible improvements on day-to-day touchpoints that stand out for Mr Banks.
He says: “A main challenge was balancing load across the site. The system allows us to consolidate our order intake and load balance effectively, and it has significantly improved our ability to manage inventory.”
He describes the Corrugated Business System’s capability for integration with third-party financial systems as another boon for the business, as accounting and finance were also disjointed.
Mr Banks cites the improved visibility of raw materials and finished goods as wins for the new system. “It allows us to optimise our outgoing dispatch and deliveries to customers as well,” he says.
“The process side of the business system is a lot more streamlined. The key advance- ments are balance load across the site, raw material and finished goods, significantly improved visibility, but on top of all this, the ability to deliver to a cus- tomer on time and in full.”
The pandemic resulted in a different approach to the imple- mentation process itself, but the installation was a success and quickly began generating results.
“The EFI team were great every step of the way,” Mr Banks says. “We did a lot remotely, and the team were great in what was a difficult environment. I can only compliment the EFI team – they were fantastic and worked tirelessly to get it in place.
“We have still got further optimisations to do, but within a matter of four to eight days they had us up and running, seamlessly transitioning from the old business system to the new business system. “Within a few weeks we were running as normal, and two to three months later we’re starting to see those significant benefits in improved efficiency and load balancing across the site.”
Although the pandemic may have triggered unforeseen modifications in the imple- mentation of the Corrugated Business System, the solution itself is advantageous as some Covid-related concerns endure.
Mr Banks explains: “The industry has been going through some challenging times, as Covid hit and changed the dynamic of the industry glob- ally and especially within the GCC, with raw material chal- lenges beginning in early 2020.
“Whether it be the economic situation, the global pandemic or other circumstances, raw material availability through freight and shipping became hugely challenging from a cost base and availability point of view, and that is still in place.
“We did a lot remotely, and the team were great in what was a difficult environment. I can only compliment the EFI team – they were fantastic.”
“Most corrugated businesses have really suffered this year, and we continue to work around that and work through it.
“The launch of the Corrugated Suite has further helped us to understand and analyse where our cost base lies to be able for us to ride out this extremely challenging time. It will support us in coming out the other side in a stronger position, and that’s what we’re gearing up for.”
As the Corrugated Business Sys- tem assists Arabian Packaging in weathering current instabilities, Mr Banks is also looking optimis- tically to the future in terms of continued strategic development. Already a user of EFI’s Escada process control system on one
of the site’s corrugators and now the Corrugated Business System, the company has its sights set on additional manufacturing execu- tion solutions to solve challenges around Roll Stock Management and paper tracking with Cor- rTrac and CorrLink planned for installation later this year.
Mr Banks concludes: “Thinking strategically ahead, we have got future plans to further invest and further expand, and EFI dovetails nicely with those future plans.
“We’re looking at the EFI solution so we potentially have an opportunity to fully integrate both upstream and downstream. If we did move in that direction, then we’d be one of the first fully integrated equipment-tobusiness suite sites in the world, let alone the region, so we’re looking for- ward to seeing where that goes.”